Electronic devices, such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDA's), often contain firmware and application software that are either provided by the manufacturers of the electronic devices, by telecommunication carriers, or by third parties. These firmware and application software often contain software bugs. New versions of the firmware and software are periodically released to fix the bugs or to introduce new features, or both.
Problems often arise while conducting updates of firmware/software in such electronic devices, problems such as, for example, managing the millions of devices that require firmware upgrades and provisioning of applications. Sometimes there can be problems in determining the existing firmware version of devices and mapping them to device capabilities. In some deployments, it is often unclear what the end points are, and providing end-to-end security is often troublesome and nearly impossible. Servers are often subject to replay attacks, and as a result security systems need to be able to guard against replay attacks, etc.
Generally, more than one carrier network, each with its own ingestion mechanisms, is supported by a manufacturer of an electronic device or by a software company providing mobile software. Some carriers do not have automated ingestion mechanisms and an administrator would load a compact disc (CD) into a server to transfer content that is to be disseminated or tested. Some carriers have to support a plurality of data transfer mechanisms and interfaces, one for each software company they interact with or one for each electronic device manufacturer they deal with.
Typically, electronic device manufacturers deal with several carriers, and they have to deliver content such as firmware code, bug fixes, etc. to the carriers for dissemination via the carrier network. The electronic device manufacturers often waste a lot of resources getting the content translated into different formats and put on different media (CDs, tape, diskettes, etc.) for transfer.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art through comparison of such systems with the present invention.